The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Advertising Week Bank of America

Will entering the ‘human era’ be enough to end years of customer mistrust? Bank of America certainly hopes so

By Patrick Baglee

September 27, 2013 | 6 min read

From Advertising Week New York, The Drum's Patrick Baglee reports on Bank of America's slow and steady move into 'the human era'.

In one of the final sessions of this year’s 10th anniversary Advertising Week, Meredith Verdone, head of brand marketing at Bank of America spoke about the brand’s slow but steady move into what has been christened the human era and the challenges that the institution faced in embedding this new way of thinking and behaviour from boardroom to branch. If you were thinking there’s been no shortage of eras to choose from over the last 12 months, you’d be right. AdAge itself told us last year that we were moving from the customer era into the relationship era. Eras, technically, are supposed to be a relatively long period, but this rapid turnover suggests we’re actually in the era era. For now, it’s all about humans. John Marshall, director of strategy at brand strategy and design agency Lippincott prefaced the conversation by describing the gradual shift in power from institution to consumer, happening in parallel to the decrease in trust and faith in institutions both financial and political. "Deep customer empathy is the strategy today," he said. "The new organisations and companies that really feel like “people serving people” are the ones who are growing."The reality, as Lippincott discovered in their report, ‘Welcome to the Human Era’, is that people complain less about the product and more about the experience that surrounds the product. Their BrandView database shows that brands which are the experience leaders outgrow their counterparts by 4 per cent in total shareholder value. So, if the experience is human, it makes sense to get it right. Verdone certainly realised the scale of the challenge that faced her in changing the culture at Bank of America: "It's really about empathy. We needed to rebuild trust. It was fundamentally broken in our category." Her most significant movement was a change of focus from scale and volume to the customer. But, as she made clear, you can't deepen a relationship without trust. Because of that, the company started by making seven commitments, using them to orientate everything from messaging to products. So where do you start? . Verdone sets out a clear path: "You have to make things easier. You have to make the information we have more accessible. You have to speak more like humans. And it has got to be a win win. I think before the financial crisis people thought the companies won and consumers lost. Now, every decision we make has to consider how does the customer win, how do our shareholders win, how do our communities win and that really was the beginning of how our company began to transform."So how does a business with 250,000 employees go about establishing such profound change? "It is pretty pervasive but it starts at the top. If it doesn't start from the CEO it doesn't happen. Brian Moynihan our CEO actually changed the vision statement of the company. Before we were the finest financial services company. We removed the vision and called it a purpose. So what is our role? It is to improve the financial lives of our customers one connection at a time. Our whole strategy is about deepening and how to connect with our customer base," she said. It seems that the entry point of this human era is about aligning your own people first, a process that started 10 months ahead of the launch at Bank of America. It’s also about the dialogue with customers, as Verdone explains. "Part of it is language and how we communicate and simplify things and meeting the customer where they are and just asking questions," she said. "We've been in this for about six months and I think it’s going to affect how we develop products. This is the human era company. It's really unleashed people to behave how they want to behave."The power that customers now enjoy is also being transferred at an operational level to employees. Marshall places a great deal of faith in the ability to allow people to be themselves. "Its based on a premise that the individual employee probably knows the best thing to do and may know better than a decision that's made seven levels removed." He referenced John Lewis as a successful example of what happens when you put the power to make decisions closer to the customer. Verdone also believes it is important to believe that the front line will get it right. With that in mind, she has worked to infuse the brand with a much needed air of humility, a quality that works for the brand overall, but specifically, places responsibility on the ‘seven levels of management’ to trust in the people at level eight. As desirable as having your own era, the need to be authentic is driving a good deal of internal and external corporate behaviours, as Graham Ritchie, chief strategy office at Hill Holliday reminded us. "I think our flaws are what make us interesting as people and I think the same is true for brands and companies." Marshall extends the point: "You don't have to be perfect anymore and people don't expect you to be and its okay to say ‘Sorry. We made a mistake’ in the human era. I think if you’re really going to come across in a human way its okay. It can actually help build the brand and its just part of the way there." Bank of America’s project is far from done and Verdone acknowledges that the hard work will continue. "This is the journey we're on. The exciting part is the internal transformation. How we connect with each other internally is really important. The hardest part is that our culture has a bias toward action and results, and it takes time to really effect the kind of change so we're six months in, and its a journey and it is going to continue to take time so I think its about having that resiliency and patience to say this is a multi-year big transformation, this isn't an ad campaign.’Throughout this week Patrick Baglee has been reporting from Advertising Week New York. He most recently reported from a session on how big data is irrecoverably changing the world of sport.
Advertising Week Bank of America

More from Advertising Week

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +